What is the yield keyword used for in C#?

What is the yield keyword used for in C#?

https://stackoverflow.com/a/39496/3782855

The yield keyword actually does quite a lot here.

The function returns an object that implements the IEnumerable<object> interface. If a calling function starts foreaching over this object, the function is called again until it "yields". This is syntactic sugar introduced in C# 2.0. In earlier versions you had to create your own IEnumerable and IEnumerator objects to do stuff like this.

The easiest way understand code like this is to type-in an example, set some breakpoints and see what happens. Try stepping through this example:

public void Consumer()
{
    foreach(int i in Integers())
    {
        Console.WriteLine(i.ToString());
    }
}

public IEnumerable<int> Integers()
{
    yield return 1;
    yield return 2;
    yield return 4;
    yield return 8;
    yield return 16;
    yield return 16777216;
}

When you step through the example, you'll find the first call to Integers() returns 1. The second call returns 2 and the line yield return 1 is not executed again.

Here is a real-life example:

public IEnumerable<T> Read<T>(string sql, Func<IDataReader, T> make, params object[] parms)
{
    using (var connection = CreateConnection())
    {
        using (var command = CreateCommand(CommandType.Text, sql, connection, parms))
        {
            command.CommandTimeout = dataBaseSettings.ReadCommandTimeout;
            using (var reader = command.ExecuteReader())
            {
                while (reader.Read())
                {
                    yield return make(reader);
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

• In this case that would be easier, i'm just using the integer here to show how yield return works. The nice things about using yield return is that it's a very quick way of implementing the iterator pattern, so things are evaluated lazly. – Mendelt Dec 22 '08 at 8:35
• Also worth noting you can use yield break; when you don't want to return any more items.

https://stackoverflow.com/a/39507/3782855

Recently Raymond Chen also ran an interesting series of articles on the yield keyword.

• The implementation of iterators in C# and its consequences (part 1)
• The implementation of iterators in C# and its consequences (part 2)
• The implementation of iterators in C# and its consequences (part 3)
• The implementation of iterators in C# and its consequences (part 4)

While it's nominally used for easily implementing an iterator pattern, but can be generalized into a state machine.

No point in quoting Raymond, the last part also links to other uses (but the example in Entin's blog is esp good, showing how to write async safe code).